Wow....great episode regarding Invasion. Best Arrow episode in a long time thanks to all the nostalgia interjected. Would have been even better if they could have slipped in a Mannu Bennet cameo as well.

I love the approach to the villain of this season. He doesn't have superpowers. He doesn't want to conquer the world, or the city. He simply hates Green Arrow, he's a villain only to him.

Also, I like that he is an anonymous person, just an unintended consequece of Oliver's actions during the first season. Actually, the villain is Oliver himself, in a way. I think I'd be dissappointed if there is a twist and the villain turns out to be a familiar face.

Prometheus' uncredited voice actor is totally Michael Dorn, yes? They should make it a trend beginning with Tony Todd's Zoom to have a Klingon every season.

I enjoyed the winter finale and the use of flashbacks in the episode. My only complaint is Artemis' heelturn. I get being disillusioned with Oliver and wanting to see him being taken down, but selling out the rest of the recruits and working with a serial killer is just too much of an overreaction.

Laurel's death struck me as being fishy. At the time I thought Ollie instigated or at least was in on faking her death. He was told she was out of the woods and stable, he visits her in the hospital and suddenly she crashes and dies without warning. However, with the way this season has played out, I figured she must've really died because so much of his actions seem to really be borne out of grief and the cost the hero biz has exacted. His decisions and angst would make no sense if he knew she was alive. But, maybe she was working with someone to fake her death, Diggle's wife perhaps for a secret mission.

That was a pretty well presented death on screen for Laurel. I mean, sure, in the universe of the Flash, Firestorm, and the Atom, most anything is possible... but I watched pretty closely and I didn't see an evidence of such.

Of course, what the writers plan is what's going to happen, y'know... Maybe the real way to find out is to see what Katie Cassidy is doing these days. Yeah, it's way meta... so?

Ian Penman - I agree with you (although I have to say... that Talia was SMOKIN' HOT! I could have looked at more of her... :) But it's one of the conceits of the show, so they use it. Hell, the Invasion episode was almost entirely a flashback, kinda.

I was very pleased that the interpersonal drama was kept to a minimum in this episode. The hearts and flowers gets a little tiresome...

I also liked that there was a teensy weensy bit of an episode of The Flash tucked into this one.

Hub City - that implies Starman and the Shade to me. But I think we're more likely to see them on LoT.

I don't mind the new Black Canary, but the forced nature of the character ranks up there with the SMALLVILLE retcon of their version of Jimmy Olsen actually being Henry James Olsen, who has a younger brother named James that ends up also being a Daily Planet photojournalist, and Marvel revealing that Nick Fury has a black son, who discovers that his birth name is actually Nick Fury Jr, gets blinded in one eye like his father, and joins SHIELD, all to create a comic book version of the Samuel L. Jackson portrayal of the character.

They need to layer on the coincidences by making her a half-sister to the Lance girls or reveal that she gets sent back in time at some point to become the Alex Kingston character.

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Arrow seems to have got its' second wind for this series. I really wish they'd can the flashbacks though! Enough is enough!

The flashback storylines for the last two seasons have been kind of pointless, but I think this season's flashbacks have tied into the show much better, especially in reminding the audience about where Ollie was in the first season and explaining how he got there. Plus you had Talia and Oliver going all John Wick in this week's episode.